My Ears Almost Fell Off

At 40 below zero, some not-so-funny things happen to automobiles.

July 2007
By
JOHN PHILLIPS

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I recently spent a week in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, 940 miles north of Edmonton, Alberta [see "Frostbite Freeway," page 138]. For a while, it was 40 below. Locals warned that trees might explode, my ears might fall off, my lungs might be scarred, my teeth might crack, and condensation from my breath might freeze my eyelids shut. All kerfuffle. Well, except that last part. The editor of Yellowknife's Up Here had his eyelashes flash-freeze while walking past my hotel. Then a trucker told me, "Don't touch the door handle without gloves on. I don't mind peeling your fingers off, but I'll have to do it with a Swiss Army knife."

"He was joshin' you," said former Mountie Jim Mackie. "You'd just leave some skin behind—like a burn."

When it snows in Yellowknife, population 20,000, city workers spread a little pea gravel and allow the traffic to compress the snow until it's as hard as concrete and as rough as sandpaper. Vehicles traversing it make a crunching sound, like Styrofoam breaking. During sharp turns, front tires squeal as if on a skidpad. In the morning, cars thump along on square tires, sounding like a Maytag on the agitator cycle.

I walked to the town's GMC dealer, whose little showroom held only one vehicle, a Pontiac Solstice, as out of place as Paris Hilton at a YWCA. I rented a silver Chevy Equinox. "You'll want to hook up the block heater tonight," the clerk warned, handing me an extension cord. "It may start at minus 30. But not at minus 40." The next morning, I held the extension cord parallel to the ground, and two feet of it stuck straight out, as inflexible as a piece of rebar.

I noticed that much of Yellowknife had been designated a "No Idling Zone" to reduce ice fog created by exhaust condensation. I also noticed that few plastic wheel covers were still intact and that a lot of glued-on plastic cladding had fallen off. Tap a parking curb and your front air dam will shatter like a Hummel figurine. Nudge into anything remotely solid and dagger-size shards of bumper plop to the ground. Struts and shocks feel like they're filled with bathtub caulk. And the snow, as fine as talc, obliterates virtually every rear license plate.

At minus 40, none of the Equinox's windows would lower, although I don't know why I tried. When I squirted some windshield solvent, it coalesced into something akin to blue grits. The plastic-to-plastic seams in the dash chirped as if inhabited by a family of disagreeable mice. And there were two cracks of geologic proportion in the windshield. "Don't worry if you form another crack," said the rental lady, causing me briefly to reach for my buttocks. "And, uh, we don't slam doors real hard around here. Weatherstripping gets solid, then it's metal to metal. Know what I mean?"

Most Yellowknifers drive Ford F-150s. But I saw one Mustang GT, one Mercury Marauder, and one Dodge Charger Hemi.While I was in town, nine Porsche engineers arrived for cold-weather testing. I sat across from them at dinner. All nine were bolting down Molson Canadians, so I bought them a round. When the beers arrived, I stood and said: "Hi, I'm from Car and Driver, but I'm not a spy photographer. I'm here to drive up the Ice Road. I just want you to know how much pleasure your vehicles have given me over the years. I hope your cars work perfectly tomorrow. Good luck!" Then I gave them a big smile.

There was total, ineffable silence. All nine men sat as immobile as Henry Moore sculptures. They studied me as if I'd been granted weekend release from a correctional facility specializing in incurable psychiatric malfunctions. I looked down to see if my fly was open. Then I walked back to my table.

The next morning, I drove to the Ice Road to see if the Porsche guys were testing, which would afford me a second chance at complimenting them. But the road's first frozen lake was devoid of not only Caymans but also Kenworths. With no witnesses around, I got the Equinox up to quite a velocity—I'm guessing maybe 80 or 90 mph—then pulled the handbrake with about the same force you'd swing a bat at a particularly slow-pitched softball. What happened next—and I'm going to do my best not to exaggerate here—took a long, long time to unfold. I don't know how many times the Equinox spun, but it might have been in the teens before I'd definitely made up my mind that I really, really wanted it to stop, which is when I broadsided a not-very-big pressure ridge—maybe four inches or so—which halted my pirouetting but had the unfortunate side effect of hoisting the Equinox up on two wheels—the wheels on my side, I recall with astonishing clarity—and now there ensued a full Joie Chitwood act that probably would have earned me a standing ovation at the Ohio State Fair. The right-side wheels touched down maybe 50 feet later, exactly when all vehicular motion ceased.

I sat immobile, staring straight ahead at a miniature snowstorm of my own making. When the flakes abated, I noticed I had both my hands locked around one of the steering-wheel spokes, and during the course of this Tilt-A-Whirl ride, the radio had somehow attained maximum volume. I turned it off. The engine was still running. An ABS warning light was pulsing, and a dome lamp in the headliner was swaying to and fro, suspended by two wires. Also, it looked like maybe the back of the car was on fire, but it turned out to be steam from snow jammed up the exhaust pipe.

I drove back to Yellowknife at an average speed of maybe 9 mph. I might have shot up to 11 mph at one point, but then I got the shakes and had to slow. I removed my gloves so I could grip the wheel more firmly. I didn't turn on the radio again. Ever. At one point, a huge 18-wheeler charged up behind me, and I caught a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror. I noticed that my facial expression looked like the Porsche guys'.

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